What is it they say about art imitating life? Well, blowhard Alec Baldwin is really good . . . at playing a jerk.
That the media-hating actor can play a total tool so well — like the proverbial moth to the flame — in Wednesday night’s episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” should surprise no one who has witnessed Baldwin’s public-meltdown act.
Baldwin plays a newspaper columnist for a paper that bears a suspicious resemblance to The Bloviator’s favorite target of rage — our very own New York Post.
Yes, it’s all supposed to be ironic — both Baldwin’s role and his (fake) newspaper — but watching him act out his skewed perception of a superstar newspaper columnist is just . . . sad. And weirdly disturbing on several levels.
In the episode, titled “Criminal Stories,” Baldwin plays Jimmy McArthur, who is described as a “legend in his own mind” (how apt!) by Olivia Benson (played by actress Mariska Hargitay), the commanding officer of Manhattan’s Special Victims Unit.
“The city needs heroes,” Baldwin’s Jimmy Mac tells Benson — there’s that irony again. But then he goes ahead and accuses her squad of getting it wrong when a Muslim woman claims she was raped in Central Park in a hate crime that polarizes the city.
“Jimmy Mac don’t retract. He don’t apologize. He don’t explain,” says Baldwin’s alter ego.
Sounds familiar, no?
How does Baldwin explain his volatile, angry screeds usually aimed at members of the press — particularly photographers? Last fall, he allegedly called one shutterbug waiting outside his apartment “a c–ksucking f-g” — but only copped to calling him a “c–ksuker.” What a guy! Then he went on to torch the very network (MSNBC) that gave him his own short-lived talk show.
But here he is as Jimmy Mac. In our faces. Again. The episode’s plot isn’t important — directed by Hargitay, it’s a typically good “SVU” — but it’s fun to sit back and savor the gems delivered by, as Benson describes it, “Jimmy Mac bloviating in the press”:
- “Don’t cry for Jimmy Mac. I always land on my feet. The whole world knows I got balls the size of Jupiter.”
- “I know you don’t like reporters, but people don’t speak to me because I carry a badge. They speak to me because I keep my word.”
Now, if art imitates life, maybe the reverse is true, too — and maybe Baldwin will keep his word and just go away already.